"Stuff is eaten by dogs, broken by family and friends, sanded down by the wind, frozen by the mountains, lost by the prairie, burnt off by the sun, washed away by the rain. So you are left with dogs, family, friends, sun, rain, wind, prairie and mountains. What more do you want?"
Federico Calboli

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Artists and Time Passing

Tom Quinn RACED through with wife Jeri today en route from her aunt's old house in Tularosa (no quail this year) over the subzero divide toward rainy Point Reyes.

The snapshot though hardly great connects a lot of dots. (As always right or double click to see bigger). Upper left is a Vadim Gorbatov original of Seton's Lobo, about a 19th century cattle killing wolf in New Mexico, done before he visited us here from our models. I know Vadim partly because he and Tom were on the original "team" of the Artists for Nature Foundation together, and I wrote about that late Cold War friendship for Tom's book. Below that is a little oil of a New Mexico horse by Jeri. The old Chinese poster is of a style that influenced Tom. (OK, the de Chirico has nothing to do with him-- it was Betsy's!)

Funny thing was that just the day before I had found this old snap of Tom's lifetime friend Russell Chatham (who also introduced me to Libby), with two less famous artists, Mary and Joe Bodio, in Boston a gazillion years ago-- 1992 I think. (My father and mother met when he was at the Museum School and she at Mass Art-- the legend says at the Tutankhamen exhibit; he abandoned art, at least professionally, after the war; she went on to fashion and advertising and eventually to watercolors).

Russ is back in the Bay Area, allegedly fallen on hard times. Vadim is in the hospital in Moscow, prepping for a serious operation. My father is gone, my mother cheerful but not wholly with us. Tom is battered but still standing, and y'all know more about me than you need. Still staggering!